Mouse Rage

A rapid heart rate..increased sweating..furious clicking of the mouse..cursing at your computer screen. Do any of these happen to you when you're surfing the web? If so, you may be experiencing the first signs of "mouse rage."

We've all had frustrating moments when our computers just won't work the way we want them to. But are poorly designed websites and annoying pop-up ads actually bad for our health?

A study published by the Social Issues Research Centre identified five key flaws in the sites we surf that could lead to "harmful health effects." The results of the study found that certain characteristics in websites produce stress and anger in computer users, causing what they dubbed "Mouse Rage Syndrome."

The five things researchers say we hate most are slow loading pages, confusing layouts, site unavailability, excessive pop-ups and unnecessary advertising.

Did we really need a study to tell us that? Probably not. But at least now we'll get to see how long it takes for the phrase "mouse rage" to enter our computer jargon vocabularies!